Staccato
by The Oddity
Summary: From the mind of a girl who enjoys painting her nails, curling her hair, and tanning on top of roofs. Featured in her droll narrative is a man with too much money and not enough shiny things to spend it on.
1. solenne

The Social Welfare Agency has long been a controversial organization. Employing girls as young as nine and as old as seventeen and ruthlessly training them, they do the Italian government's dirty work. Assassinations, investigations, infiltration, and other such odd jobs were considered a way of life for these junior operatives who were taught to kill mercilessly. But for the older males who supervised the Agency's "child assassins", it was hardly a regular day at the office.

In some instances, the men cracked under the pressure and fled their duties, only to be swiftly murdered. More than often, they treated their young protégées as if they were nonexistent, rarely resulting in a happy ending. So the handlers of Section Two tried their best to cope with their occupation.

But one such operative-supervisor pair had a much better idea of coping with the living tragedy they were enduring: by ignoring it at all costs...

**SOLENNE**

I don't know _what_ the hell this rifle is called. Beretta CPS-70/80 or something. It's ugly and black and it has no shoulder strap thingie for me. Ciro said this would be good field practice to try using a weapon with no support. I think it's a pain in the ass.

We're standing outside in this dingy, smelly apartment hallway. There's a flickering light bulb and some crummy music coming from the door next to us. Ciro has some contacts who invited him to come to their party, but the guy (his name is Pasquale or something) is a scumbag, so we figured, "Hey, let's go to this guy's party, and shoot up the place!". The Agency said it would be fine, as long as we make sure everyone and everything gets killed. The place is in such a bad neighborhood that most of the residents who live in the apartments have seen lots of drive-bys.

Ciro's eyes tell me he's not exactly comfortable here either. He doesn't have a weapon, of course; I've always got to do all the work. Not that I mind — my brain says that I've accepted this as my life. It's just duty. I've grown to believe and accept that as a part of me.

But damnit, does duty ever suck.

Ciro signals to me with his fingers. Three. I've watched enough action movies to know that he's counting down to the assault. Now there's two. I feel a little more tense than I did when it was still at three. The absence of one more finger would mean that I have to burst into this room and start ripping people to shreds with bullets. This is so stupid. I don't even remember how to properly hold a gun.

Somewhere else in this apartment, Alessandro and Petrushka are hanging out as backup for us. It's good to have Petra around. She can do most of the work for me. Maybe I can act like I need help and dupe her into coming to my aid and finishing off most of the room. She's so thick she won't realize she'd been deceived, we'll get the "mission" done sooner, and I can return home, fix my nails, and go to bed. Then, tomorrow, Ciro and I will go have breakfast together in the Piazza Navona while the rest of the Agency's cute little assassins can spend their morning eating gross-as-all-get-out-food and punching holes in targets.

I feel a cockroach scuttle up my leg and swat at it. Damn thing.

"Are you ready?" Ciro whispers, though I'm not entirely sure why he needs to be so hush-hush. The music's loud enough for two people to carry on a conversation in the hall without being detected.

"Hold on a sec," I answer. I put the Beretta against the wall and I fix my ponytail.

Just as I finish tying it up again, the door handle creaks and Ciro shoves me into the room across from where we were standing. It's dark and gross and something's squeaking by my foot. On the other side, I hear my colleague babbling.

"Come inside, Ciro!" says some brute.

"Oh, no, no, I was looking for the bathroom. I'll be there in a sec."

"Well, the bathroom's in here, ain't it? Come in, come in..."

"I really... Ah, what the hell. Lead the way, Allegri."

'Lead the way, Allegri, it's not like there's a seventeen-year-old blonde chick standing in that room behind me waiting for the word to bust your buddy's party and kill everyone inside!', is more like it.

I find a lightswitch and flick it on. The room looks even worse than the hallway did. Double sleeper smack in the middle, old television, a video rack, and not much else. I pace to the rack and pick out a title idly, with not much intent to actually watch it, though that depends on how sidetracked Ciro gets.

I turn the tape over. It's a horror by the looks of it — _Tenebrae_? Old film. The rest of the display seems to be composed of similar movies. Whoever lived in this room before was a fan of _gialli_.

Something stinks in this room and it's not just the stench of dead rats in the walls...

Sometimes, I wish my sense of smell wasn't so enhanced. I mean, if I were any normal person, the stench would already be so overwhelming for me that it would make me want to puke. Now imagine that, but ten times more. Yeah, totally lame. It's taking all my self-control to keep it down.

I lean over the side of the bed and pull the sheet up. Ho-oly crap, dead body. No wonder Ciro and I got the all-clear to commence an assault — this place has seen numerous assaults before ours. And we haven't even begun yet.

"Jeez..." I whisper to myself, silently. My earpiece buzzes and jolts me. "Damnit, what the hell!?"

"Hey, Lana, you there?" Ciro asks.

"Obviously."

"Don't play smart. What's up?"

"Oh, nothing much. Hanging out in this dingy room and having a few drinks with the local rats. Found a corpse underneath the bed. And you?"

"You found a body?"

"Corpse; noun. 'A dead body, usually of a human being'," I recite smugly.

"Yeah, yeah. Well, ignore it and prepare yourself for the attack. I told Pasquale I forgot something in the car, so I'll be coming out to get you shortly. Sooner we get this shit done, the better..."

I stand up and shift through the drawer in the bedside table. A novella sits inside along with a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and a knife. I turn the blade over in my hand, thoughtful, when the door opens.

"Let's do this," Ciro says, tossing the Beretta to me. I wonder idly how thick Allegri had to be to not notice it leaning against the wall, but when I follow Ciro back into the hallway, Petra's standing there holding _her_ gun. She smiles at me. I don't smile back.

We wait on either sides of the door as our handlers veg out further down the hall. Alessandro's looking more bored than usual. I really doubt it's wise to smoke in this place. For all I know, in that mixture of scents there could be gasoline somewhere.

"In three... Two..."

Petra is a professional with this kind of crap. I'm not. Maybe that's why she's the golden girl — successful second-stage prototype. Follows all her orders. Trains every day. Blah, blah, blah. The only reason everyone adores her is because they can't recognize all the things that _I'm_ good at. I can play guitar, I can sing, I can run... But they're just looking for the killers.

"One! _Go!_"

We burst through the door. Petrushka darts past me like a crazy red-topped blur while I stay in the doorway, shooting at the nearest participants. She swiftly caps about ten people and continues to make her rounds. Like I'd predicted, she was going to do most of the work. I doubt I'll have to even change out my ammo.

Some of the people have busted guns out, though. This could be bad.

..._Real_ bad, as I just felt a bullet whiz past my face. I duck and slip and hit the ground hard. Doesn't hurt, though; I'm back on my feet in no time, now desperately firing at my assailant, whose weapon of choice is apparently a machete (I did say it was the ghetto). I miss a lot of times. Did I ever tell Ciro I wasn't cut out for this kind of work?

A bullet pierces the man's skull from behind and he lurches forwards at me. I hold him up with my rifle stock, using him as a makeshift shield from the oddly Western-style shootout commencing between Petra and some of the more adamant men in the room.

Guns are toys, I say. And these people are just playing with their toys. The only problem is, they don't know how to play nice with each other. That's how you get hurt with them. What makes it worse, these are _grown-up_ toys, so nobody can trust an adult to buy one and not have a little too much fun with it because nobody's watching over that adult. Sure, you can legally obtain a firearm and they do the background checks and blah, blah, blah, but if that were really so effective...

...Then how come guns are still getting into the hands of irresponsible people?

I examine the shapes in the wooden floor as the room periodically lights up from gunfire.

Some bodies hit the ground with their own individual thuds, and I guess Petra's done 'leading' the assault. She walks over and bends down to look at me.

"Lana? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Did you kill everyone?"

"I think so..." Something tells me she's unsure. Ugh. "Ummm..."

I rise, knocking my makeshift shield back. I watch his face for a few moments. Although it is incredibly dead-looking, I still think I can hear his painful groans as he's dying.

&&

The Agency dispatches a clean-up crew to the location shortly after Alessandro contacts them, and we leave in separate cars. I get into the front seat of Ciro's Ferrari, not bothering with a seat buckle as he starts the engine.

We don't talk much. We usually never do after these mission-type escapades. But sooner or later, I know the inevitable will come...

"You smell like gunpowder for the first time in your life, Svetlana," he says, chuckling. I want to lash back at him but my willpower restrains me.

"I just need to bathe."

"Did you have fun?"

"As much fun as you can have in a place like that, I guess."

"Do you want to train more from now on?"

"_No_," I reply firmly. Hell no. "Not if it means I have to smell like this every single day. Now, when the explosive mixture of saltpeter, sulphur, and charcoal starts smelling like my perfume, maybe I'll reconsider."

Ciro bursts out laughing. He always thinks I'm funny. I don't mean to entertain him so much.

Something bothers me in the back of my mind until we arrive at the Agency. As I'm unloading the Beretta out of the trunk and closing it, I can hear something when things go quiet. It isn't the insects. Seeking to distract myself, I look at Ciro and ask, "You sure those dogs with the clean-up crew will do a good job?"

"If they don't, they'll get their asses kicked to curb." He lights a cigarette for the first time all night and takes a drag. "You want me to walk you to your dorm or do you want to handle it yourself?"

"I can do it fine without you. Have a nice night."

"You too, Lana."

We part ways. And as every little inch of my enhanced perceptions detect the smallest of bugs scuttling across blades of grass that are trudged upon by my shoes, and as I recall every bit of information accessible to me in a nanosecond of time, I still can't shake the bad feeling I've got as a dying man's last breaths haunt my mind. I'm not sure if it's conscience (most of the cretins here seem to be lacking in one) or pity or something just as weird.

And maybe that's why I'm not cut out for this job.


	2. libero

**LIBERO**

I have two different names.

The first one is the lovely, lovely Svetlana. Perfectly fitting, from my (frankly, quite gorgeous) body to my (beautiful) crystal-clear blue eyes. It has roots in Russia and I couldn't love it more than I already do.

The second name is "Blondie".

_Blondie_. Blech. If there's anything that makes me scowl, it's that name. Unfortunately, all of the dirty low-ranking employees of the Agency call me that. I get called out to on the street as "Blondie", simply because I have blonde hair. Even Ciro jokes at me, telling me it was borne from my sheer loyalty to him.

I'm not "loyal", and I'm certainly not a "Blondie", either.

So my name is Svetlana. I'll scream it at people if I must. S-V-E-T-L-A-N-A. If it's too long for you to possibly pronounce (Heaven forbid you strain your vocal chords!), then you can call me Lana. Just don't do it overmuch.

Now, to my knowledge, blondes are slightly rare in this grotesque little boot camp I find myself imprisoned in. This does not give people justification to stop using my proper name. I'm not a "Blondie". I'm a Svetlana. A fabulous, talented Svetlana. If I were a "Blondie", I'd be a weak, mindless drone like the rest of them.

Today, I have a job to do. Jean threw enough hissy fits that Ciro caved and now we're to go out at approximately eleven PM and bust an illegal transaction of chemical bomb materials between some sort of gang or...something. I often don't catch a lot of what Signore Wanker says, but Ciro told me it's going to take place in the ghetto in some smelly alleyway where nobody will find you but a bunch of undercover government agents.

More importantly, accompanying us will be one of the other "Blondies" of the Agency, Triela.

She and her handler are going to kill the original receivers of the bomb stuff (probably going to drop their carcasses in a trashbin) and take their places undercover. I'll be in a tower or something with a sniper rifle in case it "gets out of hand".

Awesome. Great. This was arranged because the receivers are a dark-haired man and a blonde-haired woman. I could've fit the bill, but my hair isn't the right "shade" and I'm "too tall". Whatever. Let the real Blondie do it, I probably won't have to lift a finger.

So yeah. All day I've been waiting in my dorm. Waiting, waiting, paint my fingernails, practice guitar, waiting, read magazines, waiting, waiting... Petra actually suggested I clean the dorm, but then I told her to eat the heel of one of my stilettos and she sort of made this stupid face and left. Hahaha.

I strum my guitar and sing. Oh, what an enchanting melody that pours out of my vocal chords! I could be an opera singer, if I weren't bound to this horrible job.

The door opens.

It's like a shorter version of me, just with longer hair, smaller boobs, and it's wearing a men's suit. For half a second I think it's a tiny butler. Then I realize it's one of the girls who lives here. She's a bit cute, almost as if I had a little sister with some serious fashion dilemmas. She smiles and offers her hand in the manner of a true 'professional'. "Hello, I'm Triela."

Triela.

Whozat.

...oh, wait, that girl I'll be working with. Right.

"Svetlana, Lana for short," I recite. "What do you want?"

Taken slightly aback, this Triela says, "Oh, I just... I just wanted to get to know you a bit better."

"Good luck," I snort, running my fingers idly across my guitar strings as Triela just stands in place, looking around the room and trying to desperately find a talking point to cling on to. I could laugh.

"...You play guitar?" she asks, grinning. "That's unique. Most of the girls here play orchestral instruments."

"I don't really _need_ to know how to play it, it's just something to do to pass the time," I reply. "This place is so boring."

"Is it really..."

"Yes, it is! All _your_ kind do for fun is shoot at things. Sometimes I worry about Petra; I think she's becoming just like you. Always practicing, always going on missions, always _improving_ herself to _serve_ these people. I know it's something we have to do, but... Why do it? I want more out of life than a good score or a large kill count. I want the tastiest _gelato_, the most expensive clothes, and freedom. Freedom to do what I want, when I want, and how I want to." I pause for a moment. "But why the hell am I telling _you_ this?"

Triela stares at me with her wide blue eyes for several minutes that I can't be bothered to count. She stutters.

"Forget it," I say, sitting up. "I shouldn't even be speaking with you, anyway. You're nothing but one of those mindless hunting dogs."

I stand and leave my guitar on the bed. As I walk over to my vanity table, the words start slowly tumbling out of Triela's mouth when I have my back turned. Pathetic.

"M...m...mindless hunting dogs?" she repeats. Her voice trembles with anger that's just _begging_ to come out. Oh, what a pent-up little girl she is. I bet she plays friend like this all the time, not expecting Svetlana to turn the tables on her. What an idiot.

"Mindless hunting dogs, yes. I see you have some form of comprehension," I answer, fixing my blush in the mirror. "You obey your master, am I right or am I wrong?"

"He's not my 'master'," Triela bites out furiously, turning around to meet me. I look back at her with boredom.

"Then what is he?"

She falters. "He's...he's something. I-I don't know yet. But he isn't my master, I know that."

"I think, inside, you know it's the truth, but you don't want to admit it." I sigh melodramatically and smooth out my curls. "I almost, _almost_ feel sorry for you. You have it so bad that you have to be in denial."

"I'm not _in_ denial," Triela replies.

"You're clearly in denial about being in denial."

She opens her mouth to respond but I hold a finger up, silencing her as I add, "And, let me guess, you're about to deny that you are in denial about being in denial."

"I wasn't."

"Oh, dear, just leave already," I tell her. "You're best suited to the shooting fields. A target is your best friend."

"Fine!" she huffs, turns, and leaves.

**&&**

It's creepy to go from the comfort of ones own Ferrari to a bleak, unoccupied rooftop and stare at two freaks in black coats through a scope. That's exactly what the hell happened to me, and that's exactly what the hell I'm doing right now.

Ciro sits on the ledge, swinging his legs in the air like a damn five year old. Must be nice, to not have to squat on the jagged pavement, waiting on tenterhooks in case shit gets out of hand. He breathes in the fresh, humid nighttime air and grins at me like some kind of fool on drugs.

"I know this sucks for you," he whispers, still beaming like the morning sun, and I could swear he's mocking me in some manner, "but it'll be all over soon. Here come Hilshire and Triela, look."

I turn my head and peer through the sights. Sure enough, that Blondie and her boring handler are coming down the sidewalk, right towards those freaky dudes in black. One of them reaches into their coat. I'm not even _tempted_ to warn her.

The man relaxes and removes his hand. Farmer on the Hillshire (hahaha, look at me, I'm so funny) and Blondie shake the hands of the two guys I'm meant to cap tonight. Or maybe not. I'm not even sure why I can't just shoot the duo and be on with my life. Ciro said something about they're going to try and "get some answers" out of these two pricks. Probably about some kind of...important crap.

Well, now I really know why we couldn't have gone undercover. I'm shit-poor at interrogation. Whatever, I compensate for it with everything else.

Besides, what's one skill compared to like...twenty?

Something warm comes in from behind me. I look through the corner of my eye.

Ciro.

"Er, uh..."

"_Shhh_," he whispers softly. "I just wanna see what they're doing."

"You could've, you know, _asked me to get up and move_," I hiss, feeling my cheeks burn. I can still see Triela's mop of blonde hair, but distracting as it is it can't take my mind off the fact that — HANDS.

"You're cold," Ciro murmurs, assessing the temperature of my arms. He stands up, leaving me bewildered on the ground.

I would slap him.

I struggle to get back to my kneeling position in front of the sniper rifle as Ciro turns to the ledge again, watching the transaction quietly.

Several minutes pass. Or at least, I think it's several. Neither of us dares to speak. I watch as Blondie down there chats up one of the idiots.

Suddenly, she puts a handgun to his head, wrestling him firmly around the neck as if she were holding him hostage. Hilshire points his own pistol to the other guy's head and yells for him to "put his hands up" or whatever. Some cop jargon. The guy complies.

"They seem to be handling this fine," I mutter, yawning. "I don't even know why we..."

Gunshots and a shriek.

I instantly grasp the sniper rifle and search around. I see a body crumpled on the ground and, unsurprisingly, it's Hilshire's. Triela must have fired her pistol off in surprise, because the man she was holding hostage is dead on the ground with a pool of blood around his head that's spreading rapidly. She rushes to Hilshire's side.

"Lana, shoot the other man," Ciro commands.

"I can't find him."

He leans over the side of the building. "He's running this way. Svetlana, go down there, quickly!"

My body leaps to action instantly. I grab my submachine gun off the ground and race to the ledge, following the man with my weapon's barrel. I fire, but my shots only manage to trail him.

"Don't be an idiot — jump down after him!"

Mount the ledge, hit the ground hard, jump up, give chase, shoot. I could never control semiautomatics very well and my bullets just go everywhere.

The man leads me through the deserted ghetto. Eventually, I speed up and grasp ahold of his lapel, hoisting him up in the air.

He snickers. "Run, Blondie, run," he taunts at me, reaching into his coat and pulling out his own weapon.

...you _asshole_.

"I'm not a _'Blondie'_," I murmur, holding my gun to his ear. He does the same, and the presence of cool steel feels oddly soothing.

"If you shoot, I'll shoot," he says.

"Try it. I won't even shoot you afterward."

"Yeah, 'cause you'll be _dead!_"

"If you really think so..." I lower my weapon. "Go ahead."

Having no other choice, he squeezes the trigger.

I can _feel_ it, certainly, but it doesn't hurt. It never hurts. I just stand there, blood pouring out of my skull, as the man is flabbergasted.

"Wh...what the hell is this?" he blurts out.

"_Magic_," I spit back, pointing the Beretta PM-12S back against his head.

He laughs nervously at the close proximity he is to death, and says, "Well, at least the last thing I'll get to see before I die is a hot chick. You're pretty good-looking, for a Blondie."

I pull him closer.

"I swear to god, if you call me Blondie _one more time_, I will purposefully see to it that your head gets smashed into a brick wall and your body so mangled it's unidentifiable. I am _not_ a _Blondie_. Understood?"

"If you say so, Blondielocks," he snorts. "See, I didn't call you Blondie that t—"

Blood.

Smoke in my eyes as he falls. My hands and front are dappled with red spots.

"Asshole." I unload a few rounds into his face, permanently destroying any possibility of the forensics from figuring out who this unlucky son of a bitch was, and roll his carcass into some nearby bushes.

**&&**

By the time I get back to our building, it's well-past two o'clock. Hilshire is gone, and so is Triela. The sniper rifle is packed away in Ciro's Ferrari.

He looks at me.

I look at him.

"You look like a mess."

"Tell me about it."

"Did you kill him?"

"Yeah."

"Alright, good. Jean's probably gonna chew our ass out for letting Hilshire get hurt, though." I can detect a bit of irritation in his voice.

"Why? It wasn't our fault, it was Triela's." I stow my SMG as Ciro leans against his car.

"We'll get blamed either way. Sometimes I want to quit, but I gotta tell you..." He opens the driver's side door. "The pay is _really_ good." He closes it.

"Did you ever buy that watch you wanted?" I climb in the other seat.

"Yep." He pulls up his sleeve a little and shows it off to me.

"Nice."

We're quiet for several minutes.

"So, what was all that about earlier, with the hugging and the colds arms and such?"

"There are some things you just don't talk about after the fact. That's one of them."

"...Oh."


End file.
